Space travel’s heavyweights ponder a future with antimatter rockets

Recently, two of the powerful men on the planet where space policy is concerned had an exchange on the social media platform X about antimatter. The exchange is another example of how what was once science fiction is becoming reality.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk posted, “In the future, a trillion times a trillion dollars will be spent on making antimatter to travel to other star systems.” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman replied, “I support antimatter propulsion.”

While the name antimatter invokes countless references in science fiction, it is a real thing. Antimatter is the mirror twin of matter, having the same mass but having opposite properties such as electric charges.

The reason that antimatter could become the ultimate spacecraft propellant is that when matter and antimatter collide, they are both transformed 100 percent into energy. Even a nuclear bomb converts only a small amount of its mass into an explosion that can wipe out a city.

An antimatter rocket, one that uses the explosion caused by the fusion of matter and antimatter, would be orders of magnitude more efficient that a chemical or even a nuclear rocket. Not only Mars, but the outer solar system would be within reach. The technology could be used to send probes across interstellar space to other star systems.

However, three great impediments exist to antimatter rockets. They are the problems of producing and then storing antimatter and the design of the rocket itself.

Antimatter does exist in nature, in........

© The Hill